Death of a Nightingale

CHAPTER 26: THEN IT ALL CHANGED

We've been dozing in and out of a satisfied slumber for a few hours. Just calm and entangled in each other's naked bodies. Or at least I've been slumbering. I don't know whether Grace can. Does she sleep? Does she need to?

The thoughts sober me up a little bit out of the beautiful lull of sex. Her body felt almost human. So soft, lean, and muscled in most places, curvy and full in others. I sigh.

But she's not human, no matter how well she is created to fool anyone into believing otherwise.

I blink and the movement against the crook of her neck makes Grace shift with a small huff of a chuckle. I want to ask but I swallow the question. How stupid would it sound out loud? Do you sleep?

But she must have felt something change in my behavior and kisses the top of my head as she plays with my hair.

"What is it?" She asks lowly. In that sweet, scratchy, lazy voice that's almost a whisper.

I shake my head and she tries to angle my chin up to make me look at her. But I burrow down a bit further into her soft skin.

"Now you're shy?" She muses and I can hear a smirk forming on her sinful mouth.

I don't know why the question passes my lips. It has nothing to do with sleep, but I blurt it out before I think it through.

"Do you still want to die?" It feels like the air around us freezes. My heart thumps heavy and half of me is so afraid of the answer.

With gentle fingers, Grace strokes the lobe of my ear. So loving. For a long moment, way too long, she says nothing.

Finally, I angle my eyes towards hers and search for an answer I already know deep down.

"Yes." She whispers and my heart breaks a bit. My breath quickens and I feel the need to 'fix it'. Fix what? I ask myself. This beautiful being is already dead, kills others, ISN'T REAL.

"You didn't enjoy -" With a tender, feather-light finger, she interrupts my foolish question and kisses the tip of my nose. It tickles slightly and makes it bunch up.

"I loved every second of it." She says, and in her eyes I can read the solid truth behind those words. A small part of me settles.

But a much bigger part of me doesn't understand. We have something. It's a magnetic force that drew us to each other. Into each other. I've known this beautiful woman for what? Two days? Nights? Somehow within that short timeframe, I've thrown away every anchor to my perfect life for her. To be with her, to experience her, and breathe her in. I need her. There's an existential bond between us that I cannot explain. When you have feelings like that, why on Earth would you still want to go? She seems to be reading my thoughts as though I'd spoken them out loud.

"I'd still be alone tomorrow, or the next day, or when you inevitably get so scared I'd accidentally harm you."

I pull myself up a bit further on the bed to fully face her. She's thinking it through. We can find a solution.

"I don't think you would ever do that." I say with utter confidence. About someone I've just met. Of a Being I don't fully understand.

"Or you'd age and die and I'd be alone then too. Always the same ending." The words hang in the thick air, heavy and solemn.

Both of us know where this discussion will go and yet, I ask the next question without hesitation. Ready to change myself, give myself up entirely.

"What if you bite me? Make me immortal?

She smiles. But I know this particular smile... My mother has it too and it doesn't reach her eyes.

"Even if I knew how I wouldn't wish this upon you. Having to kill. It changes you."